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"Quick Facts" about the KH-7 and KH-g Mapping Imagery

KH-7 Surveillance System

• Operational from July 1963 to June 1967
• Flew 38 missions; duration of missions spanned one to eight days
• Returned single bucket of film to earth for each mission
• Successfully returned film on 34 of 38 missions; usable images obtained from 30 of those 34 missions
• Returned 19,000 frames, totaling 43,000 linear ft "Footprint" on the ground was approximately 10 nm by 12 nm; total ground coverage for all missions was about 6.6 million sq nm
• Intelligence Community's first high-resolution surveillance or "spotting" imaging satellite
• Best resolution was initially four ft (1.2 meters) on ground; by 1966, best resolution improved to two ft (.6 meters)
• Capable of imaging areas 12 nm wide, ranging from 5-400 nm long
• Provided key cartographic information for large scale (1:50,000) maps for Department of Defense
• Priority targets for systems included Soviet and Chinese nuclear installations and ICBM sites

KH-9MAPPING SYSTEM

• Operational from March 1973 to October 1980
• Flew 12 missions (all successful); duration of missions spanned 42 to 119 days "Frame camera" imagery system; devoted solely to mapping, charting, and geodesy (MC&G)
• Returned single bucket of film to earth for each mission
• Returned 29,000 frames, totaling 48,000 linear ft
• "Footprint" on the ground was approximately 70 nm by 140 nm; total ground coverage for all 12 missions was about 104 million sq nm
• Provided key cartographic information for Level 1 Digital Terrain Elevation Data (DTED) and 1:200,000 scale maps
• Coverage of key control point areas was imaged in stereo or trilaps (three times) on a single operation to provide analysts with enough detailed information
• Average resolution initially about 30 ft on ground; improved to about 20 ft on later missions
• Designed to support foreign and domestic mapping requirements and global geodetic positioning; biggest users were the Defense Mapping Agency (DMA) and United States Geological Survey (USGS)